World Kidney Day celebrated at PGIMER

The World Kidney Day program was inaugurated by Prof Jagat Ram, Director PGIMER. Prof Jagat Ram applauded the efforts of the Department and spoke about the progress made in the field of kidney diseases and renal transplantation at PGIMER. Prof K L Gupta, Head, Department of Nephrology at PGIMER, stressed upon the need of identifying kidney disease early to prevent development of complications.

A screening camp for screening of individuals for presence of kidney disease and its risk factors was held in the New OPD complex on Ground Floor. An integrated approach with presence of doctors, dieticians and lab personnel for doing tests under same roof for convenience of patients was used. The camp was a great success with >300 individuals coming voluntarily to attend it. Some of the do’s and don’ts for kidney disease were shared with the patients:

Do’s

Control of blood pressure

Control of diabetes

Daily exercise

Don’ts

Do not use over the counter drugs especially pain killers without consultation with your doctor

Do not delay medical consultation if you have symptoms (e.g. swelling, abnormal urine appearance or volume etc.)

The Department of Nephrology at PGIMER, Chandigarh celebrated the World Kidney Day (WKD), a global event to raise awareness about kidney disease and its risk factors. It is celebrated on second Thursday of March every year. The theme for 2019 was ‘Kidney Health for Everyone Everywhere’, a theme which proposes to have universal health coverage of kidney diseases.

850 million people worldwide are now estimated to have kidney diseases from various causes. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) causes at least 2.4 million deaths per year and is now the 6th fastest growing cause of death.The theme highlights the growing burden of kidney disease and kidney health disparity and inequity worldwide.Chronic Kidney Disease is likely to be the 5th leading cause of Years of Life Lost by 2040. To tackle this issue, the Nephrology community undertakes several advocacy activities. The Department of Nephrology at PGIMER, Chandigarh liaisons with the relevant stakeholders directly or indirectly through informal and formal professional networks. On the occasion of WKD, the Department organised screening camp, voluntary blood donation camp and multimedia awareness activities.

Mark Twain once famously quipped, ‘If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.’ And it holds true even today, infact it is more pronounced in this day and age of social media, reflected in the way our main stream media is reporting these days . The truth gets drowned in the loud voices of political party representatives and generously paid participants, each one of them pushing his own agenda.